He may be pushing 90 years old, but apparel tycoon turned billionaire film producer and hardcore real estate baller Sidney Kimmel apparently wants a new house. And Yolanda hears from a little birdie that he has already closed on his latest dream residence: a deceptively modest-lookin’ contemporary spec build in prime Beverly Hills.

Yes, this really is a $25 million house

Modest is a relative term here, of course, and the only viewpoint that can be called that is from the street looking inward. Yolanda is not thrilled with the front-facing three-car garage and the grotesquely tall wart-like window hovering above it in the right corner. For $25 million (actually, $24,900,000), we don’t want none of that mess. You hear?

But the rest of the property is generally quite spectacular, even if the color scheme errs a bit too far on the side of banal beige for Yolanda’s persnickety personal tastes.

Naturally, the .68-acre lot is heavily secured behind gates and protected by an elaborate security system. A pathway of concrete steps leads to the wooden front door, which swings inward to reveal a long hallway flaunting its limestone (?) floors and a chunky columns. There is a high-ceilinged living room with three sets of French doors leading out to the back patio, and a snazzy glass wine “cellar”.

Yolanda loves herself a good contemporary kitchen, but this one leaves us feeling a bit blue. All the appliances and amenities are top-notch, of course, but don’t it just look a bit too 80s? Maybe it’s the color scheme.

The Subaru-sized center island that is carved entirely out of one hunk of marble is certainly good for a wow, but the ever-practical Yolanda wonders if it has much (if any) functionality beyond that other than another tabletop and a place to bang one’s knees. Ouch.

Elsewhere there is a vaguely gothic step-up formal dining room, a sizable living room with walls of glass overlooking the pool, and a movie theater that’s really more of a “movie room”.

The approximately 12,000-square-foot mansion has 6 becdrooms and 8 bathrooms, all of which appear to have been yanked out of a Ritz-Carlton.

The backyard features neatly-trimmed greenery and substantial patio space for hosting large gatherings.

Although the pool isn’t as big as y’all might expect for a $25 million house, how much swimming is a 90-year-old guy really going to do?

$24.9 million of love

Anyway, this house is close enough to the Beverly Hills Hotel that Mr. Kimmel could easily scoot his wheelchair on over be chauffeured to the front door in his Mercedes-Maybach within a few seconds.

Some of Mr. Kimmel’s nearest new neighbors include longtime local heavy hitters like Paul Marciano, Benjamin Nazarian, and even Neil Diamond. And don’t forget, multi-billionaire hedgehog Steve Cohen is almost directly across the street. Side note: Yolanda heard that Mr. Cohen purchased his $30 million Beverly Hills mansion because his kids attend USC and he needed a place to stay when visiting them, like on parents’ weekend and such. But we digress yet again!

A little background: Mr. Kimmel is the founder of the Jones Apparel Group, which was sold for $1.2 billion back in 2014. He currently makes do with a net worth of $1.32 billion, per Forbes. And though he’s just a few months shy of becoming a nonagenarian, Mr. Kimmel shows no signs of fatigue or retirement. His production company just merged with Hong Kong-based Ivanhoe Pictures to create lots more films!

Mr. Kimmel’s Beverly Hills mansion was built (on spec, as previously mentioned) by fellow billionaire Alec Gores. Our Mr. Gores made his money through leveraged buyouts but also dabbles in real estate investment. In addition to his main residences — a village-like mansion up in Beverly Park and an oceanfront house in Malibu — he recently paid $16,500,000 for a Beverly Hills teardown. Yolanda imagines he will build something glitzy and immodestly proportioned on this soon-to-be-vacant lot. And maybe he will move into the new build with his new third wife?

(Oops, another digression.)

Sidney Kimmel’s $27 million Malibu estate, previously owned by the late Johnny Carson

Yolanda believes that Mr. Kimmel’s current main residence is his idiosyncratic blufftop compound in Malibu’s Point Dume neighborhood. Our Mr. Kimmel purchased the two-parcel property in 2007 from Alexis Carson, the widow of the late, great talk show host Johnny Carson. We don’t know much about the house, other than it sits on 2+ heavily wooded acres and spans 7,083-square-feet of living space inside a two-story, triangular-shaped structure.

Although the 2007 purchase price was (at the time of the sale) widely reported to be as much as $40 million, property records show the actual recorded transfer value was “just” $27,067,500.

Sidney Kimmel’s $77.5 million former home in Palm Beach (FL)

In April 2008, almost exactly a year after acquiring his new Malibu digs, Mr. Kimmel sold his mega-estate in Palm Beach for a then-record $77,500,000 — a brain-frying amount that Yolanda still has trouble fathoming. ($77.5 million, really? In Florida?!?! But we digress…) That enormous sum gets you a 32,316-square-foot mega-mansion designed by acclaimed architect Thierry Despont.

The buyer of Mr. Kimmel’s fantastically expensive Palm Beach home was a guy named John L. Thornton, who is the former president of investment bank Goldman Sachs and is currently an adjunct professor. As an aside, Mr. Thornton isn’t so popular with at least one of his Palm Beach neighbors. Lotta drama out there in Florida, apparently. Barking dogs, contentious tennis courts, lawsuits a-flyin’, oh my!

One Reply to “Billionaire Sidney Kimmel forks out $25 million for Alec Gores’ Beverly Hills showpiece”

I rarely comment on the design of homes. I have designed and built homes for over 25 years. This home is undoubtedly beautiful, but I have not yet seen such a spectacular home with no heart before. There were many beautiful ideas included, but…no soul. I noted the built-in seating area below the “skylight” and the seating was so terribly uncomfortable…too shallow to be comfortable, and the back of the seating, too straight to be able to relax. Such a shame. A gorgeous venue, but so uninviting.